Holy smoke! "Batman" nabs suspect for British police

A mystery man dressed as Batman demonstrated the same crime-fighting skills as the caped crusader when he handed over a suspect wanted for burglary in Britain. Closed-circuit television footage showed a portly figure wearing an ill-fitting costume including gloves, cape and mask, bringing a 27-year-old man to a police station in Bradford in northern England.

Oprah Winfrey invited to make commencement speech at Harvard

Talk-show host, entrepreneur and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey will deliver this year's graduation address at Harvard University, the Ivy League school has announced. "Oprah's journey from her grandmother's Mississippi farm to becoming one of the world's most admired women is one of the great American success stories," Harvard President Drew Faust said.

Rodman says DPRK's Kim wants Obama to call

Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star known more for his body piercings and tattoos than international diplomacy skills, said on Sunday he returned from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea with a message from its leader Kim Jong-un for President Barack Obama: "Call me." Rodman appeared on ABC's This Week program a few days after an unlikely meeting with Kim in the DPRK capital Pyongyang, where Rodman was working on a documentary about basketball.

US lawmaker backpedals on cyclists who cause pollution

A Washington state lawmaker has apologized for telling a bike store owner, in a spat over a proposed bike fee, that bicyclists can cause pollution - just by breathing out carbon dioxide. Ed Orcutt, a ranking Republican member of the state House of Representatives Transportation committee, said in an e-mail exchange with a bike shop owner that drivers and bicyclists should both share the burden of preserving the roads they use.

Heidi Klum announces she's new judge on America's Got Talent

Supermodel and television host Heidi Klum said last week that she will be a new judge on the popular summer TV talent show American's Got Talent. Klum will be the fourth judge on the talent show created by British entertainment mogul Simon Cowell. She joins comedian Howie Mandel, radio "shock jock" Howard Stern and former Spice Girl Mel B on the show hosted by Nick Cannon.

Owner watches his stolen yacht wash ashore on TV

An 82-foot Californian luxury sailboat owner was shocked recently to glimpse the vessel on a television newscast beached and bobbing in the surf 20 miles (32 km) down the Pacific Coast from its Sausalito berth. Two men and a woman found aboard the yacht, and first thought by authorities to be in need of rescue, were arrested on suspicion of stealing the vessel after its owner called authorities to report that the yacht he was seeing on TV was his.

No drunken diplomats at UN budget debates, US urges

The United States has called for a ban on drunken diplomats at budget debates at the United Nations. "We make the modest proposal that the negotiating rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone," Joseph Torsella, deputy US ambassador to the United Nations for management and reform, told the General Assembly's budget committee.

Chile's Neruda to be exhumed after driver's murder claim

The body of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda, dead nearly four decades, will be exhumed after his former driver declared the poet was poisoned under Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship, a judge said on Monday. Neruda, famed for his passionate love poems and staunch communist views, is presumed to have died from prostate cancer in 1973.

Dinner with Spain's El Bulli chef to be sold at Sotheby's auction

Fans of Spain's award-winning El Bulli restaurant who did not get there before it closed will get a chance to eat with its celebrated chef when dinners with Ferran Adria are sold at auctions, Sotheby's reports. The two dinners, each for four people, will be among the highlights of sales next month in Hong Kong and New York, when the restaurant's wine cellar, equipment and memorabilia will also go under the hammer.

Reuters

(China Daily 03/10/2013 page4)